Columbus Dispatch: One in four Ohio prisoners are sex offenders

There is one small error in this report-- the three tier system was in use in Ohio since 1997, not 2008. The Adam Walsh Act passed in 2008, changing the classification scheme from risk assessment-based to an offense-based system.

Here is the original report from the Ohio Correctional Institution Inspection Committee

http://www.ciic.state.oh.us//docs/Sex%20Offenders%202015.pdf

And here is the article from the Columbus Dispatch

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/09/23/sex_offenders.html

One in four Ohio prisoners are sex offenders

By Alan Johnson
The Columbus Dispatch  •  Thursday September 24, 2015 3:12 AM

About one in four Ohio prisoners are serving time for a sexual offense, most for rape, a new report shows. 

The Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, a legislative watchdog agency, reported 7,707 inmates are doing time for sex offenses, with another 2,415 incarcerated for parole and other violations accompanying prior sex offenses. 

The vast majority are male. Just 137 sex offenders are female, 2 percent of the total. 

The agency said the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has been working to improve programs and treatment for sex offenders, but gaps still exist. There are no programs for sex offenders in the highest-security level in state prisons, mainly due to the potential for “disruptive behavior.” 

The report also noticed that released sex offenders have more problems than other ex-inmates in finding housing and jobs. That often leads to new offenses, the report said. 

After rape, with 4,768 inmates incarcerated, the other crimes with the most offenders were gross sexual imposition (736), failure to register (508), sexual battery (476), pandering obscenity (425), unlawful conduct with a minor (419), felonious sexual penetration (147), and promoting prostitution (68). 

Among women, rape was the highest category with 77 offenders. Woman outnumbered men, five to two, in just one category -- soliciting. 

Ohio began a three-tier post-release registration system for sex offenders in 2008, with the most serious offenders, Tier 3, required to register their address with the state every 90 days for life. Those with less serious offenses must register every 180 days to 12 months. 

The report showed the average time served for sex offenders dipped slightly to about 10 years between 1998 and 2013. 

Cost of arresting a single 76 year old nursing home resident for failure to register? $11,000

Bring back Tom Brokaw and stop this fleecing of America!

http://www.pantagraph.com/news/return-of-sex-offender-from-ohio-costs-county/article_49079d44-bcf3-52c9-8c2d-d61c3b450d61.html

Return of sex offender from Ohio costs county $11,000

June 07, 2015 6:45 am  •  Edith Brady-Lunny eblunny@pantagraph.com

BLOOMINGTON — A stop in Bloomington to cash a check following his release from prison cost James Grimm six months in jail and McLean County taxpayers almost $11,000.

The arrest of the 76-year-old resident of an Ohio nursing home and his return to McLean County for lengthy criminal proceedings was not necessary or cost effective, said McLean County Public Defender Carla Barnes.

"He had no intention of staying here. He was plucked out of a nursing home and spent 180 days in jail. The Sex Offender Registration Act is not meant for people like this," said Barnes, whose office represented Grimm.

Grimm left the Department of Corrections on June 13, 2014, having completed a nine-year sentence for predatory criminal sexual assault in a 2002 McLean County case. Grimm, like an estimated 1,500 other sex offenders in Illinois prisons, also completed about three years of parole in prison because he lacked an approved residence when his term was served.

Homeless, Grimm signed an IDOC form that said he would register as a sex offender three days after his release.  

Grimm got off a train June 14 in Bloomington and met a friend who agreed to help him cash a $855 check from his prison commissary account. After the check was cashed that day, Grimm tried to secure a bus ticket to Cleveland, Ohio.

"The bus company said I was too old to get on the bus, said I wouldn't be able to handle the trip," said the 76-year-old who battles leukemia.

So, Grimm boarded an Amtrak train on June 18 bound for Cleveland where he stayed at a shelter before being hospitalized and moving into a nursing home.

According to Grimm, he completed sex offender registration shortly after he arrived in Ohio.

The day after Grimm left Illinois, Bloomington police received a tip that Grimm had been in the city.  BPD officer Shawn Albert started an investigation to find Grimm. Two months later, Albert checked a possible address in Ohio for Grimm and noted that he was not on the offender registration list.

Albert recommended Grimm be arrested for violation of Illinois' sex offender registration rules.

According to McLean County Assistant State's Attorney David Spence, the lack of verification of an Ohio registration was the impetus for the McLean County warrant.

"It took the trip back here to unravel this whole thing. The state of Illinois had an obligation to track him," said Spence.

About four months after he left Bloomington, and after Grimm had moved to a new nursing and had reported his new address to Cleveland police, he was arrested.

"They put the cuffs on me and said, 'Illinois wants you," said Grimm, who never faced charges in Ohio for a registration violation.   

A van from Prisoner Transport Services took Grimm and several other inmates through five states, picking up and dropping off prisoners before arriving in Bloomington on Nov. 13.

"I was never so happy to see a county jail," said Grimm.

Plea negotiations on the registration charges included an offer of two years' probation, something the critically ill inmate turned down.  "That would mean living in a tent city and I knew I couldn't do that," said Grimm.

The threat of a return to IDOC for three years was a better option than living on the streets, he said.

In the end, Grimm was sentenced in April to conditional discharge and allowed to return to Cleveland.

Grimm said he received good medical care at the McLean County jail. With the $1,437 in medical costs added to the $336 transport fee and $9,150 in detention costs, taxpayers paid almost $11,000 to prosecute the elderly sex offender.

"It's been one miserable experience," said Grimm.  

Barnes said she is pleased that an agreement was reached with the state to return Grimm to Ohio.  

"We wanted to do what was in the state's best interest and his," said Spence.